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The dining table was a battlefield, strewn with papers, teacups, and the sharp edges of words.
“It’s mine by right!” Reza slammed his hand on the table, his face red.
“You’ve done nothing for this family,” snapped Farideh, his older sister. “While you were off chasing your dreams in Tehran, I stayed. I took care of Baba and the house!”
“You mean you waited,” Reza shot back. “For him to die, so you could take it all.”
Their youngest sibling, Niloofar, sat silently in the corner, her hands gripping her knees. The old house seemed to shrink around them, the walls heavy with decades of whispers and memories. Their father’s will had left the house to all three of them, but no one wanted to share.
“This isn’t what Baba would have wanted,” Niloofar said quietly, but her voice was drowned in the rising tide of accusations.
As the argument escalated, a loud thunk interrupted them. A rusted key had landed in the center of the table, tossed by their uncle, Abbas, who had been silently observing from the doorway.
“What’s that?” Reza asked, narrowing his eyes.
“The key to the cellar,” Abbas said. “I suggest you open it before tearing each other apart.”
The three siblings exchanged wary glances. The cellar had been locked for as long as they could remember. Baba always said it was just junk down there, nothing worth seeing.
Together, they descended the creaking stairs, the key heavy in Reza’s hand. The door groaned open, revealing a room thick with dust and the scent of decay.
Old trunks, faded photographs, and stacks of papers lined the walls. Farideh reached for a yellowed envelope marked For my children.
Inside was a letter in their father’s shaky handwriting.
“My beloved children,” it began. “If you are reading this, I am gone, and you are fighting. I knew this day would come. You are my greatest treasures, but I know I failed you. I let pride and silence divide us, just as my father’s secrets once divided this family. What you seek isn’t this house. It’s each other. Below, you will find the truth of who we are—and who I was. Forgive me.”
Beneath the letter lay documents: proof of debts their father had hidden, letters revealing an affair that predated their mother’s death, and a photograph of a woman holding a child—a child that wasn’t any of them.
The air grew heavy as they pieced together the fragments of a man they’d thought they knew.
“He was… human,” Farideh whispered, her voice cracking.
“No better or worse than us,” Reza said, swallowing hard.
For the first time in years, they looked at each other—not as adversaries, but as siblings bound by the same imperfect legacy.
The house still stood above them, but it no longer mattered. What mattered was what they chose to build now, together.